the music of ambient loop guitarist dave stafford and the pureambient microlabel

Monthly Archives: November 2012

last night’s project was to create a second piece using the brand new korg ipolysix application, and I am pleased to say that I came up with something quite unique, again (entitled “a warp in time”), like my first effort of a couple days ago (“polysix 17”), again, the track is drumless; this time, using a long delay to create the illusion of looping…I took a stock voice and made some modifications to it, and saved it as a new voice, and then I created five different “dual sequences”, i.e. where I have two sequences playing using the same voice, and then I ordered those five “dual sequences” into a song – “a warp of time”.

because I smoothed out the sound significantly, by lowering the attack, it creates a sort of cloudy, amorphous mass of notes, that shimmer and fade, rise and fall in a very “loop-like” way – and this reminded me too of another instance where I emulated the sound of looping – in the run up to the central bass solo in the song “wettonizer” from “gone native”, I used faded in guitars to emulate a frippertronics style on-the-fly loop – I’ve now done a very similar thing with the korg.

this piece, “a warp in time”, is very exciting for me, because the presets on the korg are a bit…olde world, you don’t realise immediately what beauty and subtlety it’s capable of – and it did not take much to make a good sounding preset sound really, really, REALLY good – even just subtle changes to attack / decay / sustain / release can make the difference.

having high-quality effects on the device helps, and it has a nice sounding hall reverb that I use generously on this piece. korg has done a great job on the ipolysix, which goes way beyond what the iMS-2o does – but with similar attention to detail and excellent sound quality.

so a few days in, two pieces done, I’ve learned the basic operation of the ipolysix – and I can heartily recommend it. like it’s predecessor, the iMS-20, you won’t get drum sounds that will knock you out, however, the way they have emulated the controls of the synth voices, you can create an amazing array of sounds just by adjusting those controls.

my first effort, “polysix 17” was just that, a first effort, I like it well enough, it’s fairly simple, it runs at a very, very slow tempo of 20 (most unusually) but this new piece, “a warp in time”, is already a cut above, a huge improvement over the first piece, because I took the time to really tailor my customised voice to what I needed, and it just works a lot better – whereas the first piece is good, the second piece is quite extraordinary.
I really like having the two sequencers available, too, that’s really useful, because you can quickly “layer” two keyboard parts, so in “polysix 17” one sequence played a “chord”, the other, a “note” using a different voice, combined, they create a certain mood that works nicely. I then created four variants, each with a different note – incredibly simplistic – so, a minor chord with first an a note, then a g, then an f, then an e – how simple is that – and used those to build up my sequence, along with a couple of other patterns that were created by recording live improvs on the keyboard, first on sequencer a, then on sequencer b, and maybe then doing a little bit of editing in the sequence screens to clean those up – but those parts, which are a bit more “free”, become the middle section of the song.

the onboard mixer with effects is useful too – and as others have noted, the ONLY place where this synth falls down is in the drum sounds, but, that’s actually NOT a valid complaint for this reason: korg is being true to the design, the intent of a synth like this is to NOT use samples, but instead, to create drum sounds using the synthesizer – which of course, only works to a certain degree. so they have done the right thing, technically, in creating the drum sounds using the synth itself – but, practically speaking, moving away from a purist view – I still wish for beautiful sampled drums as I have in nanostudio etc. but – y0u can’t really have both – either you stick with the pure concept of creating using “synthesis” – or you don’t, and I do respect korg for taking the synthesizer “purist” stance.

I love the synths themselves; I love the adaptability of the synth voices; the controls are 10000% authentic and give you a HUGE range of control over every sound parameter; I like having two sequencers instead of one, and I love having a mixer with effects – I will be able to do a lot with this app, and never need to leave it to do what I need to do.

having synthesized rather than sampled drums is a very small price to pay for getting such a great sounding, and authentically designed, synthesizer – and, at a fraction of the cost of the original polysix – that is one thing that cannot be disputed !

happy synthesizing….

new: we’ve created two new dedicated application channels on sound cloud, “purenanostudio” which will [eventually] feature dave stafford compositions created using the nanostudio app, and “pureipolysix” featuring dave stafford compositions created using the korg ipolysix application – and, “a warp in time” is the first piece that’s been uploaded to the new “pureipolysix” sound cloud page.

even with all the other projects that I am working on, and the list just seems to grow and grow, I am still finding time to work with my beloved fairlight app.

so in between the synthragas and the scapes, and being “scorched by the sun”…I’ve still been finding time to use my favourite sequencer, the fairlight.

a number of new pieces have emerged in late october and early november 2012, including a halloween-themed piece called “hallowed evening sequence” which uses some very unusual sounds (such as “wild boar” and “elephant”) to create a dark, haunted feel – I’m not normally a big fan of creepy music, but the fairlight does creepy so well – well, I just couldn’t help myself.

the piece alternates between the strange strangled cries of, alternately, the wild boar, then the elephant, then both – and a lovely, halting electronica/synth piece – including a very quick section that comes as a complete surprise in the context of the otherwise slow-moving piece. I am getting used to the idea now, of composing music for “instruments” that range from animal to submarine, from cutlery to machinery, so having wild boar and elephant as my two main instruments, does not seem as strange to me as it once did.

it turns out, actually, that they are eminently suited for a halloween-themed piece of music, because of the similarities to the sounds of panicking, screaming humans – I know that may sound a bit odd, but trust me, it just works! it does seem a bit strange still, to have “sword” and “whoop” as accompaniment – and I make good use of the “sword” sound – which is simply the sound of a sword being unsheathed, but used as a melodic device, it works great.

next up is a sprightly, [or spritely :-)] little piece called “question mark?” that features a bassoon as it’s lead instrument, with “metal01” as the main percussion instrument – these are then joined by bass organ, electric bass, english horn and, the rest of the “drum kit”: crash cymbal, woodblock and snare. I have to admit I did struggle with this piece: I liked the composition, but I was not happy with the instrumentation, and I changed out several instruments over a couple of days until I reached this arrangement – which works so much better.

normally, I would not do that, and it’s only been on one or two occasions that I ever changed an instrument – usually, once I set it (and that’s the first thing I do) the instrument stays the same throughout the process – so, the composition may change, but the instruments do not. not this time – it was the reverse – the composition stayed the same, and the instruments changed until the composition sounded right to my ears.

“question mark?” reminds me a bit of something from XTC’s “homo safari” series, it would fit in well between “frost circus” and “procession towards learning land” – somewhere in there 🙂

next we have a real favourite of mine, “the imperial” – featuring wah synth, bell synth, three different prophecy synth sounds, synth5ths, synbass and cymbsyn – so, initially, all about synthesizers – and yes, it does have a bit of a “synthy” sound because of this, but the composition itself ends up with a strangely human quality – I often use the wah synth as a lead instrument, and it works well here again, but the presence of the three prophecy synths gives this piece an amazing late 80s feel – with all the excitement of these “new” prophecy sounds.

“the imperial” burbles along, then hits a short organ-like break, then, some sort of utopian stop/start music – and then away into the high-speed chase solo section – one of the longest, most complex sequences I’ve ever created – I don’t know what came over me, but I was adding bars to this piece at a phenomenal rate – the music just flew directly from my brain into this very roger powell-like piece of music. if you put “the imperial” into a playlist that included powell’s “air pocket” album, you probably wouldn’t even notice it’s presence – it does have a fantastic high-quality 80s synth feel about it.

I’m also very proud of it as a piece of music, as a composition, because it’s quite mature, it has a number of very logical sections, and then a long and complex solo, which then resolves beautifully back one of the main themes.

next is “electric gambit” a quickly little piece that features and alternating chimes and vibes melody, back by synth toms, a bell tree, snare and orchestra. I had originally intended for this to be a lengthy piece, similar to “the imperial” but as it’s ended up, it’s quite, quite short – concise – and I realised that if I add any more, it might spoil it – I reached a logical conclusion, using the orchestra (strings) to wind the piece down – and it just “felt” like the end – so I decided to stop.

it’s fast-paced, and the variable pitch, very roto-tom like syntoms sound great, the bell tree adding a lovely percussive/melodic element periodically, but it’s the ever-switching chimes then vibes, vibes then chimes melody that I really like – it’s bright, cheerful, melodic – and the roto-tom accompaniment is just perfect – it frames the melodic content beautifully. I felt very, very fortunate on this one – it arrived quickly, practically arranging itself, and when I heard the string outro, it felt like the perfect ending that I should not mess with.

I think over the years, that the one skill as a musician that is the hardest to develop, is to know when to stop. it’s often really difficult to know when! I do think I’ve gotten better at recognising this now, whereas when I was younger, I would just keep going until excess got the better of me, nowadays – somehow, and I don’t know how – I just “know” when it’s finished – and “electric gambit” absolutely fell into that category – I reached what seemed like an ending, and I very quickly realised that even though I had meant to sequence quite a bit more – that the song had told me it was over – so it was over!

the most recent piece, that I’ve been working on over the past few days, bears the somewhat odd title of “time wounds all heels” and is probably the most XTC-like piece I’ve managed (I am talking about “pop” XTC now, not “experimental” XTC!), using any instrument – it has a funky drum and bass part intro that really reminds me of a classic XTC track – but of course, with that fairlight twist. I used a different approach on this piece – I decided to work out the drum track first, and then go back and add instruments.

that’s something I’ve never done with the fairlight, try to do things in the traditional drums first, ten bass, then instruments – the fairlight doesn’t naturally lend itself to that approach, but I thought I would try it anyway – and, it was surprisingly successful.

but of course, the best laid plans…I laid out half a drum track, and as I worked on the second half, I started adding in instruments (so much for the “drums first” approach!) – acoustic bass and a horn; and then, strangely, submarine and jet – so I ended up with a skeletal drum part for a minute or so, followed by a nearly complete second half – a very odd way of working…

I worked out the second half of the song quite thoroughly, and built up some very “prog-like” bass and horn parts, the second half is much faster than the first, so it goes then from XTC-pop to Yes-like prog in the blink of an eye.

that was the first day of work, then, on day two, I was faced with filling out the instruments in the first half…and hoping that as I did, that they would “meet up with” and complement the second half. again, I went to the acoustic bass, and I created some alternate versions of the drum bars – first, drums and bass only, then, drums, bass and horn – and that gave me repetition and variance – the drum parts the same, the accompaniment, different.

as it turned out, I need not have worried, in no time, I had reached the “already finished” section – and a quick playback revealed that the transition was seamless – you would never know where the two halves joined up! I could not have been more pleased, and I feel that “time wounds all heels” is one of my best works to date – and speaking of the date, I also realised that I am getting very, very near the required number of tracks to assemble an album!

nominally, I want 51 tracks for the album, and I am currently at track 056, however, a few of those won’t make the cut, so my plan is to continue, perhaps up to 60 tracks in total, which will then allow me to leave off a handful of tracks that are perhaps a bit too strange to “work” on the album.

I don’t know yet – I did put together a CD a couple of weeks back so that I could hear all the completed tracks to date, and, I was mostly very, very pleased with it – with one or two exceptions – but it actually boils down to “how strange do I want this record to be?” – an odd position to be in.

because a few of the songs are so, so strange, both in content and composition, that they do not make for what I would call – “comfortable” listening! I might like them, because I enjoy the process of creation regardless of the final outcome, but when it comes time to put together the best 51 tracks – it might be best if some of my strangest pieces are omitted.

I suppose I could build a small cache of out-takes – for the really brave of heart – and have the 51 main tracks be the album, and then have the out-takes available at a reduced price or as some kind of bonus package, I don’t know – I am sure I will figure something out.

as this unintentional album project draws to a close, I feel very excited about the eventual end result. I believe I am going to present these tracks in absolute audio verite, with no processing or added effects – possibly a small amount of reverb? – I don’t yet know, but the fairlight samples are so unique, that even without effects, they sound very cool – so I am thinking that I will literally just record the pieces, as-is, with no processing – and that will be the album.

I’m also teetering on a decision about running order. most of me wants to stick to a strictly chronological running order, which would then allow the listeners to parallel my own journey of learning this instrument, and this running order does allow for the pieces of most sophistication to end up at the end, where I have the most proficiency. but lately, I’ve begun to think that it might be better to try and work out a running order based on the sound of the songs – so not chronological at all, but based on how the piece sound.

generally speaking, when I master an album, I do neither of these things: I don’t believe I’ve ever presented pieces of music in a strictly chronological order, nor have I ever presented an album with no processing or mixing of the tracks – so these would both be firsts. I have a lot of thinking to do…J.

of course, there is a basic “mix” right in the fairlight, every instrument has volume and panning, and indeed, I do have a job of work particularly with panning – normally, I set the instrument balance as I compose, adjusting the volume of individual instruments up or down as I go, but I haven’t set the panning for most of the pieces – I just leave them all default stereo to start.

so I will have to go back and work on the panning where I haven’t done so, because it really does add to the overall effect – when you only have eight instruments, stereo placement becomes somewhat crucial…

in any case, it’s actually fortuitous, as we approach december, 2012 – it was in december 2011 that I first got the ipad, and the fairlight was one of the first apps that I purchased – so as I approach my one-year anniversary of learning how to sequence, using this remarkable app (and, hats off to peter vogel – who has done a brilliant job on the app) – basically, I have a nice body of work to show for it – 51 unique and unusual pieces of music – and this is music, I guarantee you, like you have never, ever heard before.

when I first got the app, I never dreamed I would make an album with it, that was the farthest thing from my mind, but then, “feast for crow” happened, and I was away. a month or two in, and I was so, so “hooked” on the device, it’s really so much fun to learn and use. at first, it is difficult, but as with anything, you learn what to do and you learn what not to do – and your pieces get better.

I think everyone uses instruments and applications differently, but I have a strange approach, because of the rather unique skill set I’ve developed over the years, I don’t think that I … think the same way as other musicians do, and I think that’s actually a blessing – I just do things “my way” and often, I disregard the “proper way” – which can have great results, or disastrous results, depending 🙂

in the case of the fairlight, the whole concept was completely new and alien to me, but, I just got stuck in, and taught myself – only reading the manual when I absolutely had to – and I learned. I’d never really worked with a sequencer of any kind before (even though I had played and owned synthesizers since I was about 18) so I had to learn how to compose bar by bar. once I figured that out – it became quite easy.

sure, some of it is tricky – say you want to have a long melody line, you have to then split that melody across three or four bars – that’s odd, but, you get used to it, and there are a couple different ways of going about it on the fairlight. as the year progressed, so did my knowledge, and now, at the end of the year, I am finding it easier than ever to create on the device – I feel at home, comfortable, so now I worry less about how to do it and I just get on with the pieces – and these last four or five have been a real pleasure to create.

the fairlight – otherwise known as “peter vogel cmi” – as used by kate bush and peter gabriel – I love it !!

I rendered the fourth piece, “rustling of leaves, turns to rattling, back to rustling, then silence”, a few days ago as I am desperately trying to break through the bottleneck of unfinished video caused by the delays of “gone native” and take four is very interesting, but I could see and hear myself still struggling with both the technology and the performance.

bearing in mind this was the first time I had ever stacked that many synths, and take four was only the second time I’d added a second melody synth to the mix, so there were bound to be some very minor teething glitches…

not so take five – I can remember, I readjusted the levels, trying to make the entrance and exit of the second synth app, the mini-synth pro, a bit less jarring than it had seemed during takes three and four – so this version is…right…it is evened out, and that also helped my confidence in the performance – I can tell I am more relaxed, I am into what is being played, I am fully engaged with the piece rather than, as on take four (not yet released), mostly engaged with the piece and partially engaged with trying to remember what buttons to push and when! this time, on take five, penultimate take…it just flows.

I could not be more pleased with this series of pieces, and take five ticks all the boxes for me, so far, anyway, because it’s been many, many months since I played these pieces, and an equally long time since I first mixed the audio tracks, so really, when I go to put together the video (six months later in this case, to the day) it’s like the first time I’ve heard the audio track, and this one was a really pleasant surprise – I knew there were some pretty acceptable takes here, but this is better than acceptable.

so while setting the video up, I watched the performance and listened to the audio for the first time in six months – and I was so, so surprised – whereas in take four, I saw a musician struggling and winning, but in take five, suddenly, all the pieces fall into place: I am calm, I know exactly which buttons to push when, so this leaves me completely free to just…improvise a melody. now, I am a guitarist, who happens to have played piano and then keyboards for many many years…but I am not accustomed to the idea of being able to play just a melody – that’s a new experience. I’ve always had to play two handed, never as a soloist using just one hand.

itabla takes the place of me needing to use both hands when playing the piano, leaving me completely free to concentrate on melody – a melody that works appropriately with the beautiful tabla and drone tanpura produced by itabla. so for the first time in my life, I can solo with complete and utter freedom with my right hand only, using the left hand sparingly to play the odd bass notes, or, bend my lonely eastern melody in the strangest ways possible using the pitch bend wheel…and when I watched the film, what I saw was a melody being created, from a quiet but creative place, in a wholly unplanned and unscripted way – it just happened, and I was the guy who happened to be sitting there in front of the keyboard when it appeared.

I start the piece, with the perfectly timed simultaneous entry of the tanpura and the first note of my melody…from that moment, the piece flies by, and I very, very nearly catch it as it does. I watch in amazement as I tackle the “central solo” the one where the second synth comes in – I dive in as if I had it planned, and my inner roger powell just takes over – I play the solo, and then, even more surprising, at the end of the solo, I then take it down to a super low note, hold it “just so”, so that the arpeggiator pattern can cycle through a couple times, then hit the stop button (going back from two synths to one at this point) with perfect precision…and then carried on with the rest of the piece as if nothing had happened.

OK, so I got lucky – the middle section came out pretty well. surely, I will mess up the ending…but no; once again, things go surprisingly well; I play the outro of the piece, and come to a conclusion – I stop the tabla, I stop playing my melody, letting off that same very low note – leaving the tanpura running. I sit for a moment, listening to the tanpura drone for a couple of moments…then suddenly, I reach up, play three notes, pause, play three more notes, then simultaneously hit a single, very high note and stop the drone on a dime – all is if rehearsed. which is it absolutely was not.

in a way, I don’t mind if this is the best piece of the six, or if takes five and six are even better than take five – I’ve been pleased with all the tracks, even the slightly unsteady take three, but take five is the kind of take that makes it all worthwhile, the one that didn’t get away…the one that worked!

I can’t remember a time when I enjoyed making half a dozen videos as much as I’ve enjoyed making the “synthraga” series of videos, with just one more to go…and at the same time, I’ve had ongoing, the remarkable experience of creating videos for scapes 16, 17 and 18 (not yet released), in between the synthraga recordings – and that has been a really interesting experience as well, particularly because those videos, actually, all 18 of the scape videos, have the remarkable attribute of having for their “video master” be a single still image – with the challenge for me, to try to animate and bring that still image to life…I’ve now done this 18 times, I’ve taken a still screenshot of each scape, and made it into a video…somehow. I’m getting the hang of this video thing.

but it’s also nice to have a straightforward video to work on, and this new track has been a really exciting experience, I can’t wait to upload this (it will be going up sometime in the next week or so) but even more exciting, I still have take 6 to look forward to…as well as about 982 scapes requiring…animation.

today I am going to talk about a new kind of music that I’ve been working with now since may, 2012 – or rather, I am just getting caught up with a new kind of music that I invented in may, 2012 – and I’ve dubbed this new process the “synthraga orchestra”, and the music that is output, “synthraga”. I’ve talked about this before, the reason I am thinking about it now is that I’ve just produced and uploaded the first video from the session, which has turned out really, really well.

on may 19th of this year I did my some of my first experiments using more than one ipad application in a live setting, specifically, a set-up where I use itabla pro for drone and percussion, in the form of tanpura and tabla, and on top of that, I play a melody on my 88 key MIDI keyboard, driving another ipad application, a really nice synth named “nlog synth pro” – and that’s the basic set-up – but, wanting to push this “how many apps can I drive at once, realistically” question a little harder, a couple of the improvs include an additional application as well, another nice synth called “mini synth pro” – so two melody synths on top of tabla and tanpura – and that turned out to be the answer for now – two seems to be the maximum at the moment with no special set-up.

I did try adding a third synth, but the output got really, really confused – so I need to read up on how to best layer applications – I know you can do more than two, but I am very lazy when it comes to details like setting MIDI channels and so on – so I managed to get a great sounding basic set up, with minimum effort – which just allowed me to play – and this first video really encourages me, because it shows on film that the ipad is not in any way shape or form a “toy” – it’s capable of making serious music – but without the kind of serious set up that I would have to do say in SONAR, to accomplish this.

in fact, while the set-up is a little bit tricky, on film, it looks easy – I am tapping away with authority as the piece progresses – first, I start off playing the melody with no accompaniment from the itabla pro application. then I reach down and switch over to the itabla app, and a moment later (all the while, playing the melody synth using nlog synth pro) I switch on the tanpura.

I continue to play with nlog pro synth melody and now, underlying tanpura, for another minute or so; then I reach down and enable the tabla. I then play the main body of the song, for another couple of minutes, and then, reverse the process: the tabla come out, the tanpura continue, then – everything stops.

it works beautifully, and I am looking forward to producing the next five “synthraga orchestra” videos over the coming weeks, and I hope you will give them a listen – I really think this might be a genre of music that I would, over time, record quite a lot of – it’s quite, quite relaxing, and I really put the pitch bend wheel on the synth to great use too – which makes sense when you are playing what is essentially, a modified raga – I was pleasantly surprised how useful the pitch bend wheel was in creating these pieces, which sound pretty much like the label on the tin: “synthraga” – playing now on the synthesizerHD channel on YouTube.

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